Nothing Goes to Waste

On Tuesday, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York will open an exhibition dedicated to contemporary Latin American design. The work of this new generation of artists is tied together by an ingenious use of “upcycled” materials that reinterpret the “detritus of technology to make it beautiful,” said the curator, Lowery Sims. Many pieces in the show “wouldn’t be possible without reused PET plastic water bottles.” (They were stripped into weaving materials, for example, for a light fixture, top, by the Spanish artist Alvaro Catalán de Ocón.)

Recycling plays out quite differently from artist to artist. Oaxacan crafters contributed to the Blowfish lamp woven from plant fibers under the direction of Raul Cabra, while leather scraps were assembled into a kangaroo-shape container by the Argentine studio Vacavaliente.